“how much do I owe you?”

Just around the time this little blog was born, one could describe me as grey… exceedingly grey. The meth was gone, my head a cloud of dead synapses… um… just grey.

But because I am a jack of many trades within my given realm of interest, along-side my job-job… I decided to edit demo reels… for actors. A demo reel or show reel, for those of you who do not know, is basically a visual video resume. It may seem like a no-brainer or an unartistic venture, but the assembling of said reels takes a bit of skill and talent. Because I was drowning in the sea of name-dropping and kissing ass that is Hollywood, I thought why not inject myself with a bit of creativity? (pun intended) I thought ‘who knows actors better than an actor‘. No, you haven’t heard of me. ‘Who knows how to edit better than someone that understands narrative and flow? Someone that has made films’. …still haven’t heard of me. ‘Who would be able to showcase talent in a visual manner better than a talent manager-ish’.

And so, even in my exceeding haze, I was able to, compile great reels in a casual manner.

What does any of this have to do with dysfunction and/or drugs? So, I’m working very closely with Actor A in order to compile a demo reel. It was alot of work… but I didn’t mind it. It is always, for me atleast, more interesting to have so many great scenes to work with and have to do more work consequently than to try to create something out of nothing (ie, actors with no material that want a reel). I’ll do either, I’m just saying.

Then, Actor A’s reel: done! My first, I would have to say, quality/professional job. It was great shit. And we both new it. And so, we come full circle:

“how much do I owe you?”

At the time, I didn’t even know. Again, grey/barely able to focus on one thing/this whole art and commerce dissident I’ve had forever. And so, “whatever” is what came out of my mouth.

“Whatever” is not what comes out of my mouth now, however.

Now, I, in fact was actually able to focus on more than one thing. Editing and during editing sessions, sort of softly directing conversation… ever so softly.

You see, Actor A and your author, here, have in common certain past experiences, allegedly. My job was to make Mr or Ms A aware of a general vibe of the aforementioned certain past experiences in your author’s experience. Now, “A” is a client, not only of mine now, but of the company for which I work, and though our policy on certain things are much more lax than anywhere that functions at this level… I still had to be careful.

It didn’t start out this way, but the idea slowly began snowballing a bit inside my head. What idea? Um… “…the just pay me in drugs”-idea. What I did have going for me was that “A”, at the time, did sell pot to one of my bosses regularly. This was no secret. Atleast among my boss and I and “A”.

Anyway, done! We were done. Ahhhh!!! Okay, I just had to do it. I had brought it to a nice awareness point… and in a joking manner, I say something to the effect of, “if you can get me some meth, it’s totally free…. ha ha ha ha…” sigh… Then, it was more like, “no, really.”

You must understand that I didn’t quit using meth the second time strictly because I was ‘over-it’…. though I must say that I was…. but because, for one reason or another, I no longer had a dealer. If I hadn’t been ‘over-it’, I would have gone and gotten one. Like I did the time before and the time before that. I believe that I must have had 5 or so different meth dealers in CA in two years. NY was only one, baby!… he still brings a smile to my face. Baby digressions aside, there is a strange sort of mini-high that comes along deciding that you are over meth and just won’t do it really. This strange sort of very very very mini-high lasts all of a few days, at the most. Now, you have to understand that this was just short of a year after “I’m over it”.

grey as hell and no end in sight. A bag of meth would have been nice.

And it was.

to be continued.

I must say that I might be impressed. This post is a throw-back to the beginning… you know, proper posts, when I wrote stories (semi-autobiographical, at that)… rather than stumbling around on the interwebs and re-posting interesting drug links. yeaaaaaayyyyahhhhh!!!